TGP has been a known quantity for at least the decade since I’ve been here and playing Fractal stuff. Just from this forum I know to never go there and I haven’t. So my questions are 1 - Why is anyone still going there and B - Why TF are we still talking about it like it matters?
There are halfway-reasonable discussions in certain parts of that forum.
And, I've only ever gotten a week long ban. I'm not willing to totally write it off. But, I don't go to their modelling area or the pub. Or many other places.
I understood they sold memberships (can't understand why someone would buy one, but that's another "what am i missing" thing).
I've been a paid member of a forum a few times. It's always that they provide value that I feel is worth a few bucks a month.
For one of them, at the time, it was partially for access to their "VIP" (just paid, not actually special) sub-forum and mostly because some of the members there REALLY helped me out when I was starting a new hobby. There were 3-5 people who were absolutely invaluable and probably took years off my learning curve. I wanted the forum to keep existing, because I wanted other people to have experiences like that. Plus, they got me a press pass to a huge music festival that I was going to go to anyway....that was also a really cool experience....no lines, free water, taking pictures up close, meeting some of my idols...etc..
Eventually, that forum kind of fell apart. It got filled with uninformed, inexperienced new users who got into this weird habit of parroting bad advice they'd heard from all over and disparaging all of the old guys who actually knew what they were talking about. More and more of the old guard (myself included, though I never really considered myself an expert....good, sure, but not an expert) retreated into the VIP sub-forum and never looked at the public rooms/topics. A handful of people moved on in life or got frustrated enough that they just quit...VIP became a ghost town, the rest of the forum basically turned into noobs yelling at each other mixed with shills and advertising, and everyone left. It still exists, but even the founders don't actually use it anymore.
Another came from a different huge hobby forum. There was a small side of that hobby that was relegated to one single thread where we were kind of allowed to run rampant. But...there were like 15-20 different conversations going on inside it because posting about those topics anywhere else would get posts deleted. After one of the prolific guys (who I think started that one safe thread) got a week long ban for basically no reason, he started his own and invited about 15-20 people via PM. That forum stayed invite-only and paid (a few dollars a month) for several years.
Eventually, the founder died in a traffic accident, his surviving wife couldn't stand to be a part of it, and everyone drifted apart. The hosting bill went unpaid for a while, and eventually it just disappeared. I probably should have volunteered to take it over, but I was broke and getting my 2nd degree at the time and had neither the time nor the money....so I just watched it die. I still miss that place.
Actually, it happened a third time...basically the same story as the second except without the death but with one admin going on a power trip and banning people. He got "fired", bans got rescinded...but the damage was done. The whole thing fell apart.